


we fell in love in october

by gyuma (seokchi)



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, First Love, M/M, Rain, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Mess, eddie also loves richie, there's some minor cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 17:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21305834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seokchi/pseuds/gyuma
Summary: it's october in derry and richie tozier tries to deal with his love for eddie kaspbrak and not kiss him. things don't go as planned.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 133





	we fell in love in october

It was October once again, and the trees thrashed with strong winds and the streets were flooded with rainwater mixed with fallen leaves and dirt. It carried the heavy scent of wet concrete and crisp air. Thick clouds covered the sky, blurring the times of the day. Derry was cold, dim, grey—and yet comforting. The town was asleep, leaving a feeling of familiar solitary. It prompted people to melt into their favorite sweatshirts and listen to the soft patter of rain on their windows. It prompted hot drinks, sweet pies, and cozy evenings with enchanting books and captivating films. It was the true season of serenity.

For Richie Tozier, it was only slightly disappointing. It was the culprit of the loss of the gorgeous sun, the days of swimming in the glimmering quarry, and the sticky palms of melting Rocket Pops. It meant staying trapped inside, away from the beauty of the fresh grass and rocky dirt. It meant him lying in the hammock in Bill Denbrough’s underground clubhouse with a random comic in front of him and listening to his friends chat with the scent of Beverly Marsh’s cigarette smoke filling the air.

But most importantly, and most contrastingly to his previous dismay of the season, most stimulating to Richie, it meant sleepless nights with his friends watching horror movies and, if Richie was lucky, Eddie Kaspbrak almost cuddled up next to him. But only if Richie was lucky. 

Right now, it meant Eddie jumping into the hammock after Richie refused to get up—it wasn’t so much that he wasn’t willing as much as it was that he wanted to play around with Eddie (little did he know this would mean Eddie joining him in the hammock but sometimes plans go better than they do in your head). With Eddie kicking off his shoes, intertwining his legs with Richie’s, settling his foot by Richie’s face on his shoulder, Richie couldn’t help but smile.

“Jesus, Eds, your feet fucking  _ reek _ ,” Richie complained but not doing anything to help the situation because Eddie’s feet didn’t actually fucking reek but that was the only thing he could think to say.

Eddie smirked and smacked him in the face with his supposedly smelly foot. Richie sighed. 

“What movie is on the agenda today?” Mike asked as he fiddled with a pencil, trying to twirl it around his thumb.

“ _ Ni-Nightmare on Elm Street _ ,” Bill told him, speaking up from the other side of the clubhouse where he sat with Beverly and Ben Hanscom.

“A movie about a monster picking off teenagers? How fitting,” Richie said humorlessly, setting his comic down as Eddie’s foot continued to poke at his cheeks. Richie shoved it away but it inched its back. 

Bill shrugged. “I thought it co-could be cool. We ha-haven’t seen it since luh-luh-last year.”

Horror movies for them were strictly a seasonal thing—an October thing, to be even more specific. It felt special that way; like it was a tradition. And it definitely fit in with the overarching theme of Halloween for that month. They would always begin with fresh films that came out in the beginning, spending those few hours at the Aladdin theater, and then transition into old classics they’ve seen many times before on Bill’s couch with popcorn, candy, and blankets.

Richie didn’t respond because he simply didn’t have much to say. He turned back to Eddie across from him, who was watching him with a certain look that Richie couldn’t pinpoint; it wasn’t bad, in fact, Richie felt an odd sense of comfort from it. Eddie looked away when Richie met his eyes, however. 

Richie tapped Eddie’s leg that had found its place by Richie’s side with a finger. “Hey, you staying over tonight?” he questioned while his heart clenched with hope.

“Barely. Had to kiss my mom twice when I left, to remind her I’d ‘be safe’,” Eddie said, rolling his eyes.

“Hey, that’s  _ my _ job. Can’t have Mrs. K’s loyalty straying away from me.”

Eddie hit him on the head with his foot. “Shut up.” But there was no real bite to the words.

“‘Be safe’? Did she give you the speech about your ‘hooligan friends’, again?” Richie questioned with slight annoyment, unknowingly smoothing his hand over Eddie’s shin.

Eddie nodded slowly. “With a special feature of ‘that Richie boy’s a bad influence’. I mean, it must’ve been a special day.”

Richie chuckled. He had known about Mrs. K’s disapproval towards him for a while now. He thought it might have started when she caught Richie rough-housing with Eddie on his bed, with the top of his head pressed against Eddie’s chest, gently enough to not hurt him, and his hands holding down Eddie’s wrists. Despite the fact that Eddie had been laughing throughout it and that he remained unscathed afterward, Mrs. K had snatched Richie off from the collar of his shirt and scolded him for ‘damaging’ her ‘delicate boy’ and ‘perverting him’ with his ‘unnatural ways.’ The whole shebang, really. Ever since then, she shot Richie hard looks when she saw him and never allowed Eddie to go out alone with just Richie. 

The ‘unnatural ways’ she mentioned confused Richie when he first heard it. All his roughhousing with Eddie seemed normal until he realized no one else messed around with each other as Richie and Eddie did and if Bev tried the same thing with one of the boys, everyone would immediately imagine they were about to have sex with one another. Essentially, Mrs. K thought Richie was “a queer” (everyone spoke that word with such venom) and, being part of the large Christian population in Derry, she thought it was disgusting and thought that he could  _ infect _ Eddie with his _ homosexual disease _ somehow. He knew how likely it was for residents to think that way, especially with all the graffiti around town demeaning “queers” and their “cocksucking.”

He scoffed when he realized she thought that, one sleepless night in his bed as he stared at his ceiling with the absent sound of crickets out his window. But that night turned sleepless when he plunged himself into thoughts and replays of moments that could’ve prompted Mrs. K to consider that. That was the same night he came to the epiphany that he was in love with Eddie Kaspbrak. He noticed the way his stomach flipped around him and the sudden, unexplainable impulses to hug or kiss him. He noticed how much he’d discard for Eddie and how he’d throw himself into anything for him. It really was a sleepless night.

He convinced himself that he could deal with it.  _ How hard could love be? _ he remembered himself contemplating. He wanted to coo and pat his past innocent self on the head with pity. 

“I love when she fronts like that. Such as hypocrite. You should hear the things she says to me late at night in bed,” Richie said, with a feigned sigh of nostalgia. 

Eddie scowled at him. “Beep-beep, Richie.” He shoved his foot into the space between Richie’s glasses and his face and pulled his glasses off with a sweeping motion. Richie heard them land on the floor and he sighed. But Eddie just smiled back at him. 

“You’re lucky you’re cute.”

  
  
  


Richie was lucky this night.

Bill was slipping the tape of  _ Nightmare on Elm Street  _ in the VHS player as Ben handed blankets to everyone and Mike passed around popcorn and bowls of candy. Richie settled in on the couch, moving a bowl of popcorn on top of his crossed legs as Eddie approached him with an unfolded blanket in his hands.

“Move.”

“What?” Richie asked, pushing up his glasses with a mouthful of popcorn.

“The popcorn,” Eddie clarified, a bit impatiently.

Richie obliged and moved the popcorn to the side. Eddie sat down next to Richie, quite closely, if Richie could add, and draped the blanket over both their legs. Richie flushed and moved the popcorn somewhere in between them as a thankful gesture, though it ended up awkwardly balancing on Richie’s thigh because there wasn’t enough space between them for the bowl. 

“Mike, pass me some Nerds, would you?” Eddie asked Mike, who sat by the end of the couch with a bowl of candy.

He nodded and threw a pack of Nerds, which Eddie caught.

“Be careful, Eds. Don’t want you choking and ending up in the emergency room. Mrs. K will lose her mind. And I can’t have her worried about her darling boy when I see her tonight.” Eddie reveled in the act of Teasing Eddie. He’d call himself a professional if he was cocky enough.

“Shut  _ up _ .”

Eddie peeled open the box and popped a few of the candies in his mouth just as Bill sat down on the couch after pressing the  PLAY button. When Bev turned off the lamps, leaving only the screen of the television to emit a bright, artificial light, Richie became very aware of Eddie. 

Their thighs pressed together under the warm blanket when Eddie pulled his legs up to cross them like Richie had. Eddie’s hand reached to grab a handful of popcorn but Richie nearly thought he was going to maybe touch him—maybe just rest his hand on his knee. Eddie’s soft cheeks carried a blurred reflection of the television light but the reflection in his glossy eyes was as clear as curved crystal. Richie’s gaze dropped to the lines of his parted, rose lips. They were slightly wet from when Eddie licked them and they were so inviting. The scent of hand sanitizer and orange that always followed Eddie was mesmerizing, because it was Eddie. Tonight, the scent had swirled and mixed with sugar and artificial flavorings.

“Need something, Richie?” Eddie asked and Richie suddenly realized he was staring. He turned pink. 

“Nothing.” He couldn’t think. Well, he could, but his mind was just  _ Eddie Eddie EddieEddieEDDIE oh my god Eddie.  _

Eddie let out a quiet chuckle and turned back to the movie as its plot just began to develop. 

Richie didn’t pay much attention to the movie. Sure, he watched as Freddy Kruger killed his first victims, but he was mainly enamoured with the small hypochondriac sitting next to him. They finished the popcorn some time ago and with every chilling moment, Eddie scooted just the  _ slightest _ bit closer. 

As Freddy went to kill the next teenager, the suspense was so thick that Eddie pressed into Richie’s side with fear. Richie froze and turned a darker pink. He glanced at Eddie, whose bottom lip popped up a bit in an almost pout-like expression and, God, he could kiss him. He considered it seriously. On one hand, all his friends were there, the mood was not romantic at all, and Eddie could slap him and never talk to him again, but on the other hand, he would kiss Eddie, even it was for a millisecond and followed by a slap. How tempting. 

So Richie didn’t kiss him, but he did the next best thing his cowardly self allowed him to do: he slid his hand into Eddie’s and laced their fingers. 

He was so warm. 

Eddie didn't slap him for this. In fact, he held onto Richie tighter just as the teenager in the film was brutally murdered. Richie’s mind flew around the idea of  _ Holy shit, Eddie is holding my hand.  _ The amount of nerves tumbling in his stomach doubled when he stole a glance at Eddie again. 

Freddy Kruger could come into his room at night and try to kill him but loving Eddie Kaspbrak would still be the scariest thing in the world. 

  
  
  


It was late when Richie woke up. Or maybe early. Very early. He didn’t know why he had woken up; he lazily attributed to his natural sleeping cycle. The sun hadn’t risen yet and the night’s stars were shielded by thick clouds pouring rain onto Bill’s roof. It was comforting, grounding Richie and pulling him out from his sleep and settling him into reality. 

Reality was him sitting up with his legs stuck into a sleeping, his vision blurred without his glasses, and there barely being anything to blurred see because the clubhouse was dark, aside from a lamp that was left on by the hammock. When Richie pushed his glasses on, he saw the hammock was empty. It hung without anyone in it.

He was alarmed. 

Earlier, before everyone had fallen asleep, Eddie won the rights to sleep in the hammock (which Richie protested towards lightly) so when Richie woke up to see that Eddie was not  _ in _ the hammock, he was alarmed. 

He exited the sleeping bag as quietly as he could to not wake anyone else and walked out of the clubhouse and upstairs to the house, checking around him for any sign of Eddie. The rest of Bill’s first floor was empty, and very dark, so he ventured upstairs again to the second floor. 

It was eerie and the floorboards creaked a lot but Richie forced himself to continue because he really was worried about Eddie. Every small sound, even if it was a bird squawking outside, sent chills down Richie’s body. He hoped Eddie would appear soon.

The first room he entered was Bill’s and he almost walked out when he didn’t see anything but then he spotted a figure out on the balcony through the glossy glass doors. It startled Richie but with a closer look, he immediately recognized it as Eddie. He sighed in relief that it wasn’t a murderer.

Eddie was out on the balcony, leaning on the railing and staring at the empty streets flooded with rainwater. He was still in his pajamas and his hair flowed with the wind. The moonlight illuminated him.

“You fucking asshole,” was the first thing Richie said to Eddie when he opened the balcony door and stepped out, promptly scaring the shit out of him and causing him to let out a small shriek. 

“Jesus fuck,” was the first reply from Eddie, a hand on his chest to stabilize himself. 

Richie closed the door. “You know, I genuinely thought Freddy Kruger got ahold of you.” He stood beside Eddie and leaned on the rail as well. “Can’t run off like that, you’ll give me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Eddie said, surprising Richie that it wasn’t a comeback. It sounded a bit regretful and Richie’s heart ached. 

He panicked. “N-No, I’m not actually mad. I was just worried, that’s all,” he blurted to try and bring a smile back to Eddie’s face. 

“Yeah.”

A moment passed. 

“Why are you awake?”

Another moment. 

“Bad dream.”

“Why’d I let you have the hammock if you’re not even using it?” Richie joked, nudging Eddie with an elbow. Eddie only cracked a small, almost forced smile. “What was the dream?”

Eddie looked at him. “Creepy Freddy Kruger murderer coming to kill us.”

“Oh, he doesn’t stand a chance against Bev, no sir.”

The rain poured harder. Eddie took a step towards Richie until they were shoulder to shoulder. 

“No, actually, Bev wasn’t there. It was just us two.”

Richie turned his head towards Eddie. “Really?”

“Yeah, you were the prissy girl who dies in the first minute of the movie.”

Richie grinned and elbowed him again. “That would  _ not _ be me. I’m macho.” He lifted his arms to show off his nonexistent muscles. 

“My subconscious says otherwise,” Eddie said with a chuckle.

“Well, now. What does your subconscious know?”

It was quiet for some time. Eddie cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. They simply stared at each other wordlessly. Eddie glanced between Richie’s eyes and his lips. Richie’s heart lurched. He really wanted to kiss him. His lips looked so soft and pink and Richie couldn’t stop thinking about them. And even when he tried to divert his gaze somewhere else, he just got entranced by the scattered freckles on Eddie’s cheeks and jaw or his shimmering eyes that reflected the moon like a painting. 

“Hey, Rich?” Eddie whispered, so quietly and hopefully. 

Richie was staring at his lips. “Yeah?” 

“Are you going to kiss me or should I?”

Richie felt instant relief and confidence. He smiled. “Yeah, you should kiss yourself.”

But he didn’t give Eddie a chance to reply as he brought a hand up to hold his face, tilting it upwards. He felt woozy but leaned in with his heart in his hands and pressed his lips into Eddie’s. 

So this was what love felt like. 

It was warm and gentle. Richie’s eyes were shut as his senses were filled with Eddie. His soft skin under his hand, the scent of oranges, the slight taste of sugar. 

Eddie’s lips moved in a symphony with his own. He pushed his tongue to brush them and it was all so, so warm. His heart was beating so loudly, he was sure Eddie could feel it with their chests pressed together now.

Neither of them knew what the fuck they were doing, the rain was drumming on the street, they were the only ones awake in Derry, but Richie was in love with Eddie and his lips were on his. And if that wasn’t pure heaven, he didn’t know what was.

When they pulled away, Eddie gave a soft smile and lowered his gaze from Richie’s eyes. They were quiet for a moment. Richie brought a hand up to card through Eddie’s hair.

“I’ve been thinking of that for too long.”

Eddie looked up at him again. “How long?”

Richie let out a chuckle. “I’ll have to show you something on the Kissing Bridge one day.”

  
  


The two of them stayed on the balcony for a while, listening to the sound of the rain and talking in the scent of wet concrete and trees, talking about seemingly nothing, yet it was so important. The sun never rose, leaving them in the glory of the night. They placed kisses on each other’s lips, enough times to make up for all the moments they wished they could but never did. Richie savored the privilege of being able to press his lips against Eddie’s and have him press back. He smiled at the thought of his past self that one night he realized he was in love with Eddie. If only he knew. 

When they made their way back down to the clubhouse, they made it with their hands intertwined and large grins on their faces. Quietly, not to wake anyone, Richie tried to break free to go back to his sleeping bag, as much as he dreaded, but Eddie gripped harder. He leaned in close to Richie’s ear. 

“Sleep with me,” he mumbled softly. “It’s more comfortable.”

With a quick—albeit slightly nervous yet excited—nod from Richie, Eddie brought him to the hammock, guiding him to lay down with gentle hands. Richie settled in until he was comfortable before Eddie laid down on top of him, resting his head in the crook of Richie’s neck. Their legs slipped between each other’s and their hands found places on the other. Richie placed a hand on the spot between Eddie’s nape and back and his other hand fit into one of Eddie’s. Eddie’s free hand rested on Richie’s chest. 

Under the soft glow of the lamp next to them, the feeling of Eddie’s steady breaths on his neck, and the warmth from Eddie’s body, Richie happily drifted off to sleep. 


End file.
